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Youtube Live and guest lectures

Hangouts on Air #HoAYoutube Live can be used to broadcast and record live events like lectures, panel discussions, conferences and performances.

Here the guest lecture demonstrates his techniques to a live audience. The Youtube Live event takes place in Google Hangouts and is projected on the wall to give the room audience as well as the online audience some perspective on the demonstration. Multiple camera angles are used in the Hangout. One camera is at the back of the room, another is over the demonstration, and another is a mobile phone that is being used to pickup audio from the presenter and the audience questions.

What

Ed Montano teaches DJs. To do this he invites experts into the studio where they demonstrate their techniques and discuss the methods. Trouble is, it’s hard to get a good view on the demo, especially when the expert is in another country! So Ed Montano has been testing out Hangouts on AirYoutube Live to webcast the guests and their demonstrations. Some developments have included multiple webcams and microphones so as to switch between different angles and vantage points in the one webcast. A mobile phone has even been used as a roving microphone tro pick up questions from the live audience in the studio.

Why

When studio demonstrations take place, some of the students can’t get a good vantage point to watch it, or they lose track when they miss a critical bit of information. Some need to miss a demo because of work or family. A Hangout on Air can not only help get a good visual and audio vantage point of a demonstration, but it sends a video signal that can be watched from almost anywhere, live or after the event. Live video webstreaming has been around for a while now, but with high bandwidth Internet access becoming much more common, and the tools needed to set up a webstream are becoming easier to master, we might expect more of its use in education events.

How

You’ll need a camera, webcam or smartphone, a computer, a good Internet connection and a Youtube account (using a non RMIT Google account). You can schedule a Hangout on Air from Google+. If you’re feeling confident and might like to experiment with multiple feeds in the one webcast (such as a roving microphone or several camera angles), invite multiple Google accounts into the same Hangout on Air and enter with a second or third computer or device. The Google account you’re using to host the Hangout on Air can manually switch between these different camera angles and audio if feedback is an issue.

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